If you’re an avid fan of SoundCloud rap then by now you’ve had an argument about Whole Lotta Red, Playboi Carti’s new album, or at least a disagreement. It’s lean, mean, extremely popular, and right in the center is Carti’s repetitive sneering sniveling arrogant high-as-hell voice. He is rap’s brattiest man — no small feat when Uzi is still out here shoulder-shrugging and eye-rolling — obsessed with the idea of being above it all and simply existing at that high plateau.

On WLR and in general, he aims to embody “the cool,” and for what it’s worth I’m buying it. He’s the coolest. But then what man, what??

Twitter discourse has been all over the place about the 24 track experience. Even though all of WLR sounds the same (satisfyingly grating), consensus is half of it is good, and half of it is terrible. I guess the classic/trash dividing line being what passes for criticism on social means that if you can’t decide which one something is, it’s both.

Then again it’s not easy to criticize an aesthetics-focused work that (mostly) checks substance at the door but still aims to disrupt the game. Have you ever read Vogue Runway reviews of fashion shows? Word salad that rarely adds up. That’s what criticism of WLR is like. There’s not a lot to grasp in the music besides shapes and textures, and there’s not a lot at stake other than Carti radiating energy. What can you really say about it? Well you could provide context. More on that in a second.

Personally I like how it sounds. Distortion flowed/flows through all SoundCloud tidepools going back to 2008, and it’s a major theme on the record. The crunch signifies recklessness, which here is accentuated by buzzsaw synths, and then mediated by Joy Division-esque mixing, with a stark separation of treble, mid, and bass. The combination makes it at once indulgent and balanced. Maybe Kanye had something to do with that, since he co-executive produced it? Maybe the shallow flash of it all owes something to the other EP, fashion designer Matthew Williams of Givenchy and Alyx, who makes a very sick diaper bag which I own? In any case I like how minimal yet enveloping it is.

Context wise, certainly Lil B and SGP innovated the basic sound Carti is tapping into, the lo-fi, everything-clipping, antagonistic stream of consciousness style. Does he give them credit? No, he gives them disrespect. Calls himself King Vamp to discredit the goth lord SGP (or maybe Jim Jones, or maybe Kool Keith, or maybe whoever else called themselves a vampire throughout rap). And he doesn’t even mention Lil B, a nicety that Carti’s stylistic father A$AP Rocky at least extended. Maybe Carti’s vamp-hood is a nod at his own biting tendencies? That would be too self-aware, though.

Carti thinks he’s doing punk rock (self-described “Punk Monk”) but the music on WLR is really culmination of SoundCloud rap as a “rockstar” style, which is more reminiscent of hair metal (macho frivolous sex/drugs/rocknroll). In the subgenre, Carti is the last man standing after all the SC kings died and all of the women were shut out by grassroots gatekeepers (like No Jumper which is a coke-bro boys’ club, or Rolling Loud which has done concerts with like 50 male rappers and one woman). In meme parlance he is the final boss. From his beginnings in the early 2010s he borrowed elements from literally everyone, pioneers all the way up to the current cutting edge, and then carefully honed and violently barfed up all that influence into a kind of hallucinating drill sergeant approach to rap, an outlandish direction.

Practically however he’s leading his troops nowhere (except a circle pit at shows), and doing it under the idea that he made up the route himself. Very little history is alluded to on WLR (that he used to ride around with KEY! is mentioned, but fans already know; that he used to ride around with Father is completely left out). There is almost no source material mentioned, just the implied idea that Carti himself is the source.

And that is worth arguing about. Carti’s revisionist history and false claims. Why is giving credit so hard? Is he embarrassed that he learned so much from other people along the way? And if he’s truly the disruptive force that he seems to be, what will his influence end up as? More abrasive rap expressionism?

What’s not up for discussion is whether this is an awesome-sounding record, or one that you feel in your skin the second it starts, or whether Carti is a king in his given lane of rap. Carti is it, WLR is it, and we are lucky to have either at all. But time will tell if he’s an open door for other artists to fly through, or a beautifully painted wall.